Yesterday (20 May 26), Marked Improvement attended the Skills for Care “AI and the Future of Social Work” Summit at Edgbaston, where Charles Shields presented alongside Julie Stone on behalf of our client TSA – Technology Enabled Care Services Association.

The session explored an increasingly important question for the sector:

How can digital tools, immersive learning and AI support professional practice without losing the human relationships, empathy and ethical judgement at the heart of social work?

One of the strongest themes emerging from the event was the importance of co-creation.

In digital learning, the most effective resources are rarely created by technical teams working in isolation. They are developed collaboratively with practitioners, subject matter experts, organisations delivering frontline services, and increasingly, with people who have lived experience of care and support systems.

Over the past 18 months, Marked Improvement has been working with TSA on the development and rollout of the TSA Learning Hub, which now supports more than 11,000 users across around 100 organisations in the technology-enabled care sector.

A major part of that work has involved the development of TSA’s QSF-aligned workforce learning modules. These modules were co-created with the sector itself, helping ensure that the learning reflects the realities of frontline practice rather than abstract theory.

Importantly, the updated versions of the modules, which are about to launch, have also been shaped by user feedback gathered from the first phase of delivery. That ongoing process of listening, refining and improving is central to effective digital learning.

At the summit, TSA also shared the roadmap for the next phase of development of the TSA Virtual Home in partnership with Skills for Care. The focus is not on replacing professional judgement with technology, but on creating tools that support reflective practice, improve access to trusted information, and ultimately create more time for person-centred care.

The conversations throughout the day reinforced something we strongly believe at Marked Improvement: technology should support people, not overshadow them. As digital learning and AI continue to evolve, co-creation will remain essential to building solutions that practitioners trust, value and genuinely find useful in practice.